Sunday, October 23, 2011

Last week (October 16-22) was National Chemistry Week in the US. Did you celebrate? By all rights, it could have been the biggest one yet, since we’re deep into the tenth month of the International Year of Chemistry (#IYC2011). Did you see any news specials? Did Time or Newsweek run an exposé?

Credit: time.com

Probably not, but why not? When scientists cracked the human genetic code, front pages everywhere relayed the tense horse-race between Venter’s TIGR and Collins’s Human Genome Project. Whenever physicists flip the switch at the Large Hadron Collider, the public dreams of mini-black holes and cheating Einstein’s relativity. Chemistry, however, always seems to be the black sheep of the gang; DuPont’s slogan for nearly 50 years was “Better Things for Better Living . . .Through Chemistry,” until the final portion of the tagline was dropped in the mid-‘80s.

What creates the chemistry image problem? It’s true that many of the “pure chemistry” accomplishments of the last 30 years have gone largely unnoticed: ask someone at a local restaurant about triblock copolymers, organocatalysis, brevetoxin, or dye-sensitized solar cells. Applied chemistry fares a bit better, from polymers to paints, lasers to ligands, but the public still attributes many interface discoveries to other fields – drug chemistry gets lumped into “Health and Medicine,” or water-splitting tossed in with “New Energy.”

Don't let the test-tube on the front fool you.
Credit: amazon.com

The phenomenon even reaches general science books. On a whim, I opened up National Geographic’s The Science Book (bonus tagline – Everything You Need to Know about the World and How it Works) at a book store last week. A hefty volume, coming in at 432 pp., thus you might expect the “central science” to occupy at least 30% . . . right?

Does this all come down to poor public relations? Biology sells itself on some big questions: origin of life, evolution, ending disease, and genetic engineering. Physics moves out onto an even wider plane: does God exist?, fundamental particles, dark energy, string theory, and black holes. Ask most people about the word chemical, however, and their connotation is tangibly negative, associating the word with poisonous, pollution, ersatz stand-ins for “genuine” flavors or fragrances, artificial, corrosive, or toxic.

Prof. David MacMillan, Princeton

Not that none have addressed the issue – just recently, David MacMillan, editor of Chemical Science and accomplished organic chemist, called for increased outreach:

‘One major thing chemists need to work on is their ability to promote their work to other scientists and the public. This is something we are really not good at in general and if we improved, it would really open doors for us and improve society’s perception of chemistry and its impact.'

ACS attempts much the same with their Chemistry Ambassadors program, and the Interactive Periodic Table of Videos surely adds some demonstration “Wow!” factor. But the days of science-themed programs (Mr. Wizard, NOVA, How it’s Made, even the tongue-in-cheek Look Around You) seem to have waned, and Mythbusters can’t save the whole genre single-handedly. Linus Pauling, Noam Chomsky, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, and Oliver Sacks have held down much of the science PR fort, but we still haven’t found the next great chemistry “populizer.” So, what are we to do?

Can these guys hold down the science program genre forever?
Credit: dsc.discovery.com

Well, I’m not the first to tackle this question. Luckily, many have gone before me: see Dr. Free Ride’s post on Scientopia (“navel-gazing” sounds so apropos) or the CHEMisperceptions Blog Roundtable from early 2011 hosted at ScienceGeist. Start there, and glance through the situations and stories these authors present. See where you stand.

And think. Just think.

Think about how you’ll answer the dreaded “So, what do you do?” question at the next holiday party. Think about a show you wish were on TV, DVD, or radio that covered breaking-edge reactions or materials, but isn’t. Think about how you might tell such a story. Think about what types of jobs you, as a chemist, might envision working in 10, 20 years . . . if they even exist right now! Think of the reactions, equations, elements, polymers, or drugs (heh) that really ‘get you up’ in the morning.

When you’ve thought awhile, narrow down your list to one or two things you truly enjoy. Write a short blog post or a newspaper article. Send an email. Take some pictures. Tell your kids. Teach a short course. Write a book. Produce a show. Anything you can do that creates new, high-quality content to help improve the stead of science in the world will do.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Hello, readers . . .you may have noticed a lot of down time around here lately. Truth be told, we're planning a wee bit of "geographical displacement" brought on by "employment improvement" (Translation: a multi-state move is in the works).

See Arr Oh

Who is this masked chemist?

Finding my way through new challenges.
I was a founding blogger at Scientific American's Food Matters and Blog Syn. I once wrote for C&EN's The Haystack. I've written for Nature Chemistry, Newscripts, Chemistry Blog, Chemjobber, and Totally Synthetic.